LINES OF THE DAY

". . . But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to somethingover there only because I amhere. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past -- or more accurately, pastness -- is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the pastas past." p. 15

". . . But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands." p. 153Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Mary Beard Learns the Internets Host Hordes of Woman Hating Trolls

[ " TV presenter and academic Mary Beard has said she has become the victim of a torrent of "truly vile" abuse online of the kind that would "put many women off appearing in public" following an appearance on BBC1's Question Time.
Beard, professor of classics at Cambridge University, who recently presented the BBC2 programme Meet the Romans with Mary Beard, said that the abuse followed an exchange with an audience member on the panel show on Thursday about the effect of immigration on services in the Lincolnshire town of Boston.
The Question Time exchange – in which Beard cast doubt on some stories about strains on public services – has prompted an online backlash and introduced Beard to what she described in her blog for the Times Literary Supplement as "a side on internet trolling that I haven't experienced before" and one that is "truly vile". " ]

I read her columns in various publications regularly, admire and respect her intellect and knowledge.

Mary Beard is a middle-aged woman starting to verge on elderly, a well respected University don and classics scholar. One does doubt those men gleefully abusing her have anything near the achievements she's accomplished.

Hatred of women, like violence against women, is on the rise everywhere. The so-called 'western, developed, civilized' societies are very much participants, no different from the Indian men / boys who raped and murdered the poor woman on that bus, for no reason than she was a woman.